RED DWARF "The Show Was At Its Funniest With An Audience"

AWESOME TV PREVIEW DAY 5 Red Dwarf co-creator Doug Naylor explains way the studio audience is back for series ten

The boys from the Dwarf are back for a new six-part series on Dave this autumn. One of the big talking points about the comeback is that the live studio audience – a mainstay of the show's early days, but absent for series seven and 2009's three-part "Back To Earth" – has returned for Red Dwarf X . We asked Doug Naylor, co-creator of the show and writer of the new series, why he decided to go live again.

"I think Red Dwarf was at its funniest with an audience," Naylor told SFX . "The only reason the audience was dropped on series seven was because we were looking at doing a movie, and Ed Bye who was directing suggested we should do it that way because it was good practice for the film – it would be a different vibe. I totally bought that idea, so we did it like that and then played it to an audience and it was a bit of a mess, because you can’t really gap it for laughs – you can’t expect the cast to accurately guess every gap. Then we went for the slightly different format with the prison on series eight, but I brought the audience back, and that was a bit raucous that audience, it was like having a rock and roll night. Despite that the cast love working with an audience, it brings them alive. It's show night so they produce this energy that you don’t necessarily get if you’re shooting five days a week with single camera. It’s a different skill."

The brand new Red Dwarf X comes to Dave on Thursday 4 October. Read more about the show in the new issue of SFX , on sale now. Red Dwarf features in our 24-page Awesome TV Preview bonus mini-mag, alongside all of the big new shows starting between now and Christmas.